In many enterprises there is an organized flow of information and work between departments and workers, in short called work flow, the work flow being managed according to certain rules. This is true for office work places, such as banks or insurance companies, as well as for manufacturing plants. The flow of information and work is in prior art realized as a flow of paper documents that in many cases initiate certain pieces of work in certain stations in the flow path. The paper documents may e.g. be sales orders, invoices and credit applications in an office, and e.g. manufacturing orders, requisitions and manufacturing statistics in a manufacturing plant.
While keeping a paper based work flow, offices have now to a large extent been equipped with personal computer terminals or micro computer networks. Some work places have become so automated that they require constant interaction between a user and a computer. In manufacturing plants computer equipment is often installed on the shop floor to monitor and improve productivity and to control the production process. Many large enterprises have installed communications networks comprising data communications means connecting a number of terminals to a central computing site comprising a computer and a database. This provides geographically spread users with access to the computing power of the central computer and to the central database in order to achieve consistent use of common information.
In an enterprise, the organized flow of information and work between departments and users is thus often managed through the use of formal documents and related work procedures. Examples are sales orders, invoices, requisitions, time reports, credit applications, job orders, quotations and purchasing orders. The documents consists of sheets of paper of different kinds, e.g. preprinted forms, notes, letters, memos, computer print-outs etc.